There is No Wind
by PhoenixDragonDreamer
Summary: He holds his breath and tries to remember, but the warmth and hush overwhelm his mind, soothing him to impacability, easing his thoughts back to the beauty and peace that surrounds him.


****Warnings:** **Angst, Dark!fic, Character Death(?), Horror, Gore

**A/N:** Written for **eleven_pond**'s main 'Image/Lyric' fest showdown between Team Amy and Team Eleven . Fiction based on Image #8 (Two watches hanging from twine – can be seen at my LJ). (Written for Team Eleven - whoot!)  
><strong>Summary:<strong> _He holds his breath and tries to remember, but the warmth and hush overwhelm his mind, soothing him to impacability, easing his thoughts back to the beauty and peace that surrounds him._  
><strong>Disclaimer(s): <strong>_**I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!**_

* * *

><p>Two watches…suspended in midair.<p>

One is big and one is little, (he knows that is important, but he can't quite fathom why) -

There is no wind.

They tilt like they are being blown, but they don't sway and oddly, their hands never move. There is silence in the windless trees, though he can feel them trying to speak; but to have a voice, you must have movement and there is no movement here.

There is no Time.

He knows (somehow) that this, too, is important. But he can't remember _why_it is important – and the peace of this place, the sense of stillness, shreds away any urgency or curiosity.

The watches –

_Why are they important?_

shine with an inner light. There is sunlight, warm and thick amongst the dense clutch of leaves and branches, but it doesn't touch these keepers of time. No, they are filled with their own light, one that dances over their open faces and brings back thoughts of…

He's not sure what he's thinking of, but he knows the grimy, battered look of the largest watch fills him with melancholy; like he understands this time-piece that keeps no time, that sways and tilts in a breeze that isn't there – that no longer functions as it ought to. Just as the smaller one fills his heart…hearts?...with pain and joy unimaginable; or at the very least, unspeakable.

A shiver dances over his shoulders and it mars the peace and stillness of the copse of trees. He has polluted this place with this motion and the idea of it brings a weary resignation along with a sense of the inevitable.

He holds his breath and tries to remember, but the warmth and hush overwhelm his mind, soothing him to impacability, easing his thoughts back to the beauty and peace that surrounds him.

This is a beautiful place.

There is no wind in the trees; but now they are trying to talk to him, their leaves motionless in the warm, humid light though they rustle and sigh with humanesque voices –

_Aaaiiimmmeeee_

They whisper, rasp, rattle –

_Roooorriiiieeeeeee_

A moan, a caress of sorrow.

Still the watches do not move.

Nothing moves here.

Not even Time.

**O~o~O**

_They careened wildly inside the Console Room, unable to even grasp the railings surrounding the dash as they were tossed like broken dolls, any sembalance of gravity laughable in the face of the unrelenting turbulance they were met with. He tried calling out to them, but his voice was lost amidst the spit and sparks from the dashboard controls, smoke roiling and twisting from beneath them as the TARDIS choked on the Vortex that smashed at Her frame._

_He couldn't get Her under control._

_All around and within his mind was an endless, empty scream that reminded him of the Void and his legs wobbled with terror as he clutched at anything and everything to keep himself upright. He tried to hear over the roar of flames and hissing fizz of the Rotor as it dashed itself to pieces inside it's hub, tried to hear if Amy and Rory were even still _alive _inside his machine – his dying machine that was trying to land and leave all at the same time within wormhole they were currently locked in._

'This is the end_,' he thought, relieved, terrified and angry all at once. '_This is when We die.'

_But he wasn't suppose to die here._

Amy and Rory _weren't suppose to die here. They were suppose to die old and peaceful within their own beds, surrounded by their loved ones and he –_

_Wasn't suppose to die here. Not like this, not with his Old Sexy ripping Herself to shreds from the inside out. Not without warning, a signal, a sign – not like this._

"Amy_!" He screamed, pausing long enough to cough breath into his lungs as flames belched out from the engines beneath his scrambling feet. "_**Rory**_!"_

_The only sound was the voiceless howling inside his mind, the roaring groans and crashes from the machine as She mashed Herself to death inside the Vortex, Her insides seeming to accordian even as they expanded; the TARDIS' death throes sent slivers of razor pain through his chest, his mind, making it hard to breath, to attempt to concentrate – watery eyes searching frantically for his friends._

_A crumpled flare of denim and fiery hair catches his attention as he slides across the cracking glass floor and he remembers that sometimes…sometimes knowing is worse that not knowing –_

_There's blood under the denim._

"Amy_!" He feels his voice break more than he hears it, the screeching moan of his Ship ringing in his head rendering all sound incomprehensible at best, void at worst. "Amy – _please_! Rory! _**Rory**_!"_

_He hears nothing, the sounds within his mind and all around having reached deafening levels – a press of melted cotton against his ears, a sense of falling beneath his feet. His others senses were scrambling to catch up, but they felt almost delayed in the rushed slow motion of their hurtling death-trap. His eyes were overwhelmed by the smoke and dancing flames all around him; the ultra-violet sparks and flares from the console. His sense of touch and taste clogged with burning metal and wire; everything electric and too scorching in the acrid atmosphere –_

_They weren't suppose to die here._

_He staggered into the console, barely attentive to the sparks arcing out from beneath the navigation controls, his left hip slamming into the railing sending him sprawling, his body coming to a messy rest near Amelia's still form – practically on top of her._

'And wouldn't Mr. Pond get a kick out of _that_ one_,' his brain supplied unhelpfully, the sudden urge to giggle only strangled in the face of the smeared maroon surrounding his best friend; the blood already baking to the flooring as the temperature steadily climbed the scale from hot to practically volcanic._

_The emergency systems were obviously shot. There was no way She was suppose to allow it to get this bad inside, not with living –_

_Mr. Pond._

Rory_._

_The shaking, lurch of his machine steadied (for mere seconds), with a wailing groan and he braved clambering to his knees, too frightened to check Amy's pulse without her husband's authority (as ridiculous as that sounded), the terror of what he might find if he did pounded at the back of his mind, his throat dry with a terrible, knowing suspicion. He needed Rory for this – he needed Rory to be _okay_._

_As it was obvious his wife was not._

_This shouldn't be happening._

_He swayed with the grinding, shuddering tilt of his beloved TARDIS, crawling through the lung-bursting smoke in a blind shuffle, hands randomly slapping against the super-heated glass floor in search of his best friend's husband; in search of his _other _best friend – the man who had survived 2,000 years for the woman who laid too quiet and still behind him. He couldn't lose even one of them – to lose them both was unthinkable, it was _unconscionable –

_He could feel the whimper as it puffed past his lips though his blown ears couldn't hear it, his eyes dry now in the overwhelming heat that clutched at him, sweat steaming off of him before it could even start forming. This was bad. For a creature such as him, it was bad – horrible even; for _humans…

_He startled when his fingers landed awkwardly across a rough surface, his flesh registering it as worn leather from a hiking boot before his brain could translate it to an image – hand pawing frantically up the laces until it encountered the sensible cotton tooling of Rory's socks._

'Gotcha_!' he thought, unaware that he was laughing now (or was he crying?) – the sound of it lost in the thundering void of his ship – though the rippling shriek of it belling from his throat left a taste of copper and salt in its wake. He barely got time to rejoice in the fact that he had found Rory in this den of chaos before he became aware of just how very still the leg beneath his hand was._

_Like Amy…_

_A flash of burning blood pooling beneath ginger tresses, the phantom smell of scorched iron –_

'No…no, no, no, no_!'_

_He pleaded gutteral nonsense and pain with cracked lips, falling to all fours to crawl towards Rory's prone form – still unable to see it through the thick, purple-gray smoke that came from everywhere and nowhere all at once; all senses (even the one of direction) lost in in the haze of fear and uncertainty. His luck had run out. The impossible was happening all around him._

_The impossible was dead in front of him._

"Rory_!" he called, knowing there would be no answer. Even if the man could hear him, even if he himself _could _be heard – there would be no answer._

_It was almost a relief when his ship lurched again, the tired shimmy throwing him to the right and straight into the disasterous ruin of what was once the console. He didn't have the time (or strength) to brace himself before his skull met unrelenting metal and stone, the muted crack of bone reawakening the concept of sound before blackness pulled him under._

**O~o~O**

"Doctor? Doctor! Can you hear me? Rory – he won't…_Doctor_!"

"I don't know what's _wrong_, I can't – keep him still! It doesn't help when he's thrashing about – _damn_!" A stretched pause, a thin trill of panic. "He's…he's burning up! We need to get him to the medical bay – Amy, help me –"

"I've got his legs. Don't you do this - _don't you do this to us_. Doctor. _Doctor_!"

**O~o~O**

_But even that was lost to the black._

**O~o~O**

"That doesn't matter…" He murmured, keen eyes taking in the motionless shiver of the trees as his voice invaded the quiet, his soft whisper of speech just as damaging as his shudder against memories that didn't haunt him.

"That doesn't matter." He repeated, unsure of _what_it was that had no consequence here, only sure that it made no difference in the face of this warm peace that wrapped him up like strong, loving arms; the mild wave of disapproval at his disruptions of the atmosphere more like an absent chide than a gray anger.

There was a tickle on the back of his neck.

The non-existant breeze soothed across his collar and keened nonsense with no sound and he had to check the lazy urge to look behind him. He knew there was something important he was missing. It may not matter now – but it did once.

If only he could figure out what that was.

The trees sighed and the watches leaned, tilted, slanted unticking in the endless silence.

There was nothing to move them, nothing to move _him_–

The blank, still faces of those time-pieces called black sorrow to his heart and he smothered it before it could leak through his veins, stir with his breath and spread his corruption further into the empty wonder of This Place.

_Aaiiiimmeeeee…_

"Doesn't matter."

_Roooorrriiieeee…_

"I don't understand."

The tickle at the back of his neck oozed down the groove of his spine and he wondered how he still moved within this place of no Time. How he still breathed in air that was still and silent.

And he wondered (in a mild way) how long he would keep breathing and moving in this place that was and yet was _not_– where even the concept of Time was erased from one thought to the next.

"Doesn't matter," he thought/said/breathed –

Ignoring the ache that flared for a moment at the back of his head while nothingness trickled distantly past the nape of his neck, streaking it's lonely way to the jut of his shoulder-blades.

Doesn't matter…

**O~o~O**

"_Doctor_!"

"He's crashing – Amy, I don't even know what – "

"_Pleasepleaseplease_–"

"Doc…hear – _ammit_, I can't –"

"With us – _you hear me_? You…do…now!"

**O~o~O**

The wind didn't blow, the leaves didn't move – but the very air whispered nonsense just under his hearing, the nagging tug of something unremembered like a shaved glass shard in the eye of his mind:

_A walk in the open fields…_

_A tree with bad intent crouched, rotting, reaching with daggers of poison to steal his warmth and vitality…_

_Two people he held dear thrown out of harms way as a sharp pain arrowed into his flesh below his hairline…_

_His ship was crashing _–

'_That was just a fever dream_,' he mused sleepily, unsure why he needed to think that, but he knew it was the truth.

But then, technically – it was all just a dream…wasn't it?

_We are all fairytales in the end…_

Nothing existed but This Place.

Where Time never moved and watch-hands never ticked.

He was corroding, unmaking, unbeing.

But that was okay.

That was the only thing that _really_ mattered.

_A crack of thunder as bone met an unmoving object_–

The watches tilted in endless dizzying sunlight that never reflected from their faces…

_A whispered 'ffft' of sound as a tiny, tiny dart embedded itself in his neck_–

The trees huffed and sighed, their umoving branches a creaking stillness in the sorrowful, warm canopy of golden green…

_His air collapsing in a short barking scream as blood trickled down the back of his neck; sweet blackness enfolding him as his beautitful, beautiful ship disintergrated around the motionless bodies of his friends_–

Time didn't live here. There was no such thing as Time.

Why would such a heartache exist in the Stillness that made even the Void seem noisy and hectic?

_There was only peace here…_

**O~o~O**

An annoying shriek of sound blared against the hollowed thinness of his ears, a steady bleat of distress that overloaded his stretched senses, leaving him roiling with sickness and glaringly flat and empty all at once.

"Thank God," a male voice breathed, the man's relief like liquid aloe over raw, oozing burns. "We thought we'd lost you. Amy? Amy, I need –"

The shrill blatting of the…machine?...droned on, threading through the wavering notes of the man's voice, rendering them colorless and gray in the swampy wash of his perception.

" – what it was?" A Woman's voice –

_My sweet little Amelia – come away with me…_

" –RDIS is still analysing. I don't know how much more time –"

_We'll have adventures…_

" – can't die here. Not now. So wake up, you bloody idiot. Let's see them mossy greens, yeah?" The Woman's voice was closer than it had been before, the usual symphony of her vocalisations marred with an under-current of sadness and bleak hope.

_You have a schedule for everything…_

Time-Space-Everything blinked, sweeping sideways before righting itself against the cool, soothing tingle of The Man's voice.

" –Amy…I don't know what to do, I-I don't even know where to _begin_–"

" We have to find a way…just…_die_! Not when we _just_ got him back…can't lose…_again_–"

The dulcet sway of her voice turned to faded maroon cascades of raw pain, leeching into his bones, compelling him to sit up, to reach for her and take that hurt away. Pain was a mad animal – it bit and bit and bit until only shreds of feeling were left; until there was nothing to sing warmth through the tattered remains of your soul.

_Billowing clutches of greasy smoke/cascades of fiery red soaked a deep purple in baking heat/ barking wails of gut-deep sorrow before his mind smashed to fragments and he was left in the black…_

_Needle embedded in the thin meat of muscle so close to his spine/dragging, staggering shuffles until he was wrapped in the cushion of the TARDIS' panicked humming walls/cool cloth, warm saline, the press of hushed and frantic voices as solid against his skin as the slender fingers anchored to his wrist…_

Which one was the dream?

_A sharp stab of pain blooms in his chest, spreading, thickening – then fading-fading, leaving numb relief in its aftermath. He tries to hold his breath, only to find he wasn't breathing to start with and a sob shudders-slips-whispers out before he can stop it, the sense of something irretrievably _gone _clinging like murky shadows to his thoughts._

What was he thinking?

The alarm beside/behind/to the right of his cracked and aching skull dropped in pitch, speeding up to lightning quick thumps of tone that rammed against the sensitive curl of his ear. He tried to voice his objection to this rape of his senses, but all that came out was a whining growl that was quickly drowned out in the clarion wail of the monitors –

" – heart has blown out. It just…seized…how much longer the other one –"

"-_ctor_? Doctor – _please_!"

'_I'm sorry_…' he thought, sorrowful at the flutter of half-recognition the words brought. Like they were important. But he knew the words didn't matter, they never did – it was the intent, it was _Amy and Rory_that were important.

So he had to _try_.

"I'm sorry," he croaked, the words crumbling past the push of his lips, falling weightless into the scream of the machines that read out his dwindling life-span .

But she heard him.

His Amelia Pond.

The Girl Who Waited.

"No – no! Stop it! You stop that, Raggedy Man! Don't you _dare_–"

He sighed as the soft, yet calloused pad of the Man's – Rory's – palm swept across his brow, steadying the spin of the room; his voice a trembling crack of steadiness and sorrow without walls.

"Doctor, tell me how I can help you…if you…what will we -?"

The Boy Who Waited – the Last Centurion.

What a staunch and brilliant Companion he turned out to be.

_Good on you, mate…_

Blackness rose up on leaf-lined wings to shiver him into the Quiet and he met it unflinchingly; reflecting on the face of a watch that was ancient and unmoving against the pull of Time.

**O~o~O**

_The heat is like a blazing supernova, aftershocks like spasms of light streaking-falling-fading behind his eyelids._

_His TARDIS is dying, his friends are already –_

NO.

_And there is nothing but blackness and heat and hollow moaning in his mind._

_But (finally, terribly) even the eerie keening stops and he is left adrift in the heat and choking smoke – the rattling death knell of his machine felt, rather than heard –_

_As Her insides collapse, if feels like it is his own._

A door opens.

_Golden light and endless peace pour through the threshold, eating the blackness and smoke and heat and fear. He crawls to the light, head throbbing-aching-pounding, hearts broken and mind blank; a grief soaked slate in need of erasure. Only one last thought remains (_Amy-Rory_) and then even that is eaten by the light (_Rory-Amy_) the peace spilling into his mind as blood spills down his collar. The TARDIS' (_his_) insides collapse (_break_) as he crawls and crawls before emerging (_finally, fatally_) into a copse of trees –_

**O~o~O**

"I am an old man," he breathes, relieved as the trees take the pollution of his speech and translate it back into golden light that tilts against the windless sky. "I have lived past my time."

He raises his old-young hand, surprised when nothing disputes his age, other than the flesh stretched across his bones; his youth a lie and a refreshment , a reprieve against the Time he always runs with (against). He wonders if he'll show his tarnish, his rust – like a grimy time-piece suspended on a fragile thread; too big to be held for long, yet hanging forever in the dense insanity of the universe. He wonders (then) if he'll see himself reflected in the blank watch-face, if he'll See beyond the peace and light and warmth of This Place…and stretches his hand out –

_The trees shudder their protest?_

To touch the Thing itself – his mirror, his twin, his avatar that shouldn't be in this place that likely wasn't.

His fingers brush past (_Amy-Rory_) the smaller watch, hearts clenching at how he misses -

_Aaimmmeeeee…_

Rooorrriiiieeee…

the days of a clean and untested face; before they come to rest against the cool, brassy surface of the larger, more ancient time-device. He barely registers the subtle weight of it against his skin when the surface of the watch flares to blinding life, inner light engulfing him, expanding…until all he can see is –

**O~o~O**

_The world is spinning, stumbling, dragging –_

_He knows what this is…he felt it years before a few months ago with a kiss from a lover who was once an enemy. But he can't tell them, can't say as he staggers, then is half-dragged, then carried to his Home, his constant Companion when all others are gone._

_It looks like he will be leaving Her soon._

_Speech is impossible as waves of pain rise and fall within; all concentration placed on breathing and not letting them worry (a futile task, but one he can't help but practice) reality bleeding out and becoming gray as his hands brush the threshold..._

_She is trying to speak to him._

_But the thoughts are jumbled, distorted nightmares within the fever of his blood and he loses the images of comfort and grace within columns of fire, of heartbreak and agony._

_His hearts (_Amy_) and mind (_Rory_) are dying – his soul collapsing outwards within the Vortex of the deadly poison spreading, expanding and hollowing his body; his fever catches them all on fire – they will burn and burn and –_

**O~o~O**

"Ahhh!" He gasps, one hand coming to hover over the right side of his chest – though he wasn't sure why. There is-was no pain here…only peace. The warmth of it flows around him, wrapping him tight and keeping him safe – like watches tilted in a non-existant wind.

_Did he try to touch them?_

Why would he do that?

Their surfaces shine with an inner light, the silence pressing in like a warm blanket that longs to call your shoulders home; the quiet less oppressive and more comforting as each second that never was ticks by in a place of no Time.

_A door opens…_

The trees sigh…

There is no wind amongst the branches…

He reins in the urge to look over his shoulder, the feeling of something missing, something _lost_beating like a second heart within his breast; he knows he will only find more trees (and watches) behind him.

Nothing exists but This Place, even as this place is not.

There is no shimmer of blue (the bluest blue) to beckon and remind him.

There is no (_Aiiimmmmeee_) ginger amongst the gold, nor any (_Rorrriiieeee_) cool relief against the warm pouring of sun that always shines – but never invades.

It is beautiful here…

_**DOOOOCCCTTTOOOOORRRRRR!**_

He finds himself turning in the direction of the voice that is not and in the shimmering blue light that never was in This Place –

**O~o~O**

_Smoke chokes and fad__es into the bellows of bursting lungs – a rapid tattoo of a single pulse threads through veins made of fire and blood. Every motion is agony and he cries dry tears into the baking darkness as the Rotor groans its last and he spin endlessly in a gravity made impossible and inevitable in the Vortex of suspension; a watch with still hands, an old man with a young face meeting Darkness in the dark – _

DOCTOR!

_Mad, impossible, patient and unfathomable – he widens opened eyes and light spills in with the sounds of shrieking alarms scraping-clawing against imploded ears. He cranes his broken head up, up, forever up and –_

**O~o~O**

" – _impossible_! The analysis…_dying_…what I wouldn't give –"

"We can't…River will…_what do we do_?"

_Mad, Impossible Amelia –_

"…can't tell us. I don't…"

_Roraniocus Pondicus –_

Was it worth it?

(_Shut up…of course it was._)

The sound of soft weeping, monitors a distant fading trill as cool slender fingers clutch his right wrist, mirrored by warm, calloused fingers gripping his left hand – anchoring, stilling his spin in the vortex of his mind. The brassy face of a pocket-watch suspended on a coppery chain drifting through his thoughts, lazy, brilliant, as he struggled to see through the swooping colors and lights that dimmed his vision. Sweet murmurs of sound lapped against the singing wreckage of his ears, his body to small and tight to contain everything he was, everything he felt –

_I'll blow the casing in no time…_

He tried to breathe past the fireworks of glassy, yet distant pain to whisper the secret – the secret of his salvation – the inner workings of a destiny that was ever-changing in a sea of uncertainty.

The engraved casing of a brass watch burned through his thigh, the quiet weight of it a warning, a chide against a long (_forever_) lifetime of too many close calls.

Maybe it was all a dream.

He tried to tell them – he tried to push past the Now to show them the face of a Watch that never kept Time without a soul. Of a holder of dreams that never ticked without life moving its ever-silent gears.

He tried to whisper of an ancient device that was youthful within its eternity: A perfect reflection of the inner light it carried when opened; its warmth and peace when it was closed and blank – secret nestled safe inside its voided mechanics.

He tried to tell them past the fading streaks that passed as light; the hollowed ringing that passed as sound; the shuffling shadows that passed as thought – clutching the feel of them, warm and loving, solid and _there_, to the thin thread that kept him tilted against the windless, airless present. They were his anchor, his whisper amongst the silvery leaves that held him above Being Not and he clung desperately to them, breathing thinly through the weighted press of their fragile skin against the fading warmth of his own flesh…

Mad Impossible Amelia Jessica Pond and Rory (Roranicus) Pond(icus) Williams – the best of him, everything that he held onto and fought for…

The door opened –

_But that doesn't matter…_

Golden light poured in –

**O~o~O**

_Until that, too, was lost to the Black…_

**O~o~O**

Two watches…suspended in midair.

One is big and one is little –

_he knows that is important, but he can't quite fathom why – _

There is no wind.

**O~o~O**

He knows the grimy, battered look of the largest watch fills him with melancholy; like he understands this time-piece that keeps no time, that sways and tilts in a breeze that isn't there – that no longer functions as it ought to. Just as the smaller one fills his heart…hearts?...with pain and joy unimaginable; or at the very least, unspeakable.

**O~o~O**

He holds his breath and tries to remember, but the warmth and hush overwhelm his mind, soothing him to impacability, easing his thoughts back to the beauty and peace that surrounds him.

This is a beautiful place.

There is no wind in the trees; but now they are trying to talk to him, their leaves motionless in the warm, humid light though they rustle and sigh –

They whisper, rasp, rattle –

A moan, a caress of soundless sorrow.

The watches do not move.

Nothing moves here.

_Not even Time..._

_**~Finis~**_


End file.
